1998

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0971 Thursday, 8 October 1998.
[1] From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 01:34:46 EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 9.0950 Re: Editorial/Interpretational Practices
[2] From: Kurt Daw <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 08:24:49 -0400
Subj: Two Noble Kinsmen
[3] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 09:16:25 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 9.0962 Thesis Proposal
[4] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 09:29:32 -0400
Subj: SHK 9.0956 Re: "Bad" Shakespeare
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 01:34:46 EDT
Subject: 9.0950 Re: Editorial/Interpretational Practices
Comment: Re: SHK 9.0950 Re: Editorial/Interpretational Practices
>G.R. Hibbard would be silly to adopt the approach as described, but he
>doesn't. He is giving an example of the consequences of following F1,
>not Q2 as Justin Bacon suggests. Hibbard does not justify making
>choices at random. Rather, he consistently follows F1 where it
>introduces cuts, arguing that they were probably made by Shakespeare for
>a theatrical manuscript. Hibbard's fine edition shows how carefully
>reasoned discussion can lead to an innovative yet coherent treatment of
>the text. That's surely of serious interest, but sorry, but there's no
>shameful wandering, no cover-up.
>John Jowett
Perhaps I'm missing something but...if the object of study is
Shakespeare then the text closest to Shakespeare's manuscript is the
important one: Q2 in Hamlet's case. If your interest is Drama then the
text that is the most coherent may be your best bet, how the text got
that way may be a secondary concern. Any one who chooses F1 Hamlet as
Shakespeare's revision has a lot of explaining to do. My feelings are
that since F1 was printed 7 years after the big guy's death and 13 or so
years after he retired, the F1 text probably represents the state of the
text the last time it was performed and could have been revised by many
non-Shakespearean hands.
John Robinson
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kurt Daw <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 08:24:49 -0400
Subject: Two Noble Kinsmen
To James Moore and others who have asked:
The request for a good *Ed3* text is complicated, but to the corollary
request for a *Two Noble Kinsmen* I unhesitatingly recommend to you the
Arden 3 edited by Lois Potter. (ISBN 0-17-443462-6) It has been released
within the last year and is widely available. Potter's excellent notes
provide background on the publication history of the piece which help to
explain why it was "discovered" as a (partially) Shakespearean work only
recently, despite having been originally published with his name on the
title page!
Kurt Daw
Chair of Theater, Kennesaw State University
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 09:16:25 -0400
Subject: 9.0962 Thesis Proposal
Comment: Re: SHK 9.0962 Thesis Proposal
Jason Vernon Starnes writes
> These few examples give a clear picture of the divergent nature of
> Christian and pagan interpretations of the play [King Lear].
You might want to consider what Christian and pagan theologies have in
common. In _Radical Tragedy_ Jonathan Dollimore argues that they share a
sense of innate inner human identity. Both call for endurance of
suffering and assert that, even if people can't see it, there is a
corresponding orderliness in the universe and in the individual: people
have a place in the big plan. Even if a person is crushed by experience,
the very destruction of their human identity is a validation of its
existence and hence the human spirit somehow triumphs in its failure.
For Dollimore, I understand, all this nonsense is undermined in
'radical' Jacobean tragedy which shows human identity to be formed by
circumstance and hence brutalized revenging anti-heroes are made by bad
circumstances, often at court.
(If the above isn't right, I'd appreciate a correction/qualification
because I'm trying to get these ideas across to students at the moment.)
Gabriel Egan
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1998 09:29:32 -0400
Subject: Re: "Bad" Shakespeare
Comment: SHK 9.0956 Re: "Bad" Shakespeare
David Schalkwyk says that ' To Wittgenstein *all* Shakespeare is bad.'
Not quite. Wittgenstein said that Shakespeare's similes were 'in the
ordinary sense' bad, but he concluded, intriguingly, that 'they must be
a law to themselves'. The 'enormous amount of praise' lavished on
Shakespeare certainly struck him as merely 'the conventional thing to
do', and who'd disagree with that? But his own response was rather more
complex and, I'd say, refreshing.
Terence Hawkes